Around Middlebury, the name Stameshkin is more of a proper noun. As in, “Check Stameshkin,” or, “Here’s what I found in Stameshkin.”
David Stameshkin is the author of The Town’s College: Middlebury College, 1800-1915 and The Strength of the Hills, 1915-1990, a two-volume set that serves as our official history. Many, though, no longer link the name to an actual person and instead simply affix the moniker to disembodied authority. So on an otherwise languorous summer afternoon, I had a hard time reconciling this accepted definition of “Stameshkin” with the bushy-haired, mustachioed, spectacled fellow who had just popped into my office and good-naturedly introduced himself as David Stameshkin. My confusion only deepened when he proffered his latest book: not the long-awaited (in some quarters) third volume of Stameshkin—see!—but a slender paperback whose title immediately signaled a twist on the now-familiar conceit of people listing all the activities they wish to do before shuffling off their mortal coils. Playfully tweaking the form—even after strategically inserting asterisks, we’ve chosen to leave the actual words to your imagination—and announcing “things I will not be doing before I die,” David Stameshkin’s new book left me briefly speechless. But not for long.
Since reading this riotously funny, yet also poignant and reflective book, I’ve been recommending it to friends, colleagues—even strangers. It’s refreshing how Stameshkin (the man) has prompted me to think about what I wish to accomplish in ways that the myriad and plentiful “bucket lists” never have.
Before leaving my office, the author told me he still wants to write one more historical monograph before he kicks the…you know. It won’t be volume three, he said, but it will be Middlebury-centric: a biography of Joseph Battell, one of the more pivotal characters in this institution’s history. Not to knock the 19th-century benefactor or what will surely be an insightful account of his life, but doesn’t this news make what Stameshkin doesn’t plan on doing with the rest of his years more enticing?